Clarifying your values and ethics
We each make ethical judgments every day. These decisions are based on our personal values. Graphic designers should clarify their personal
value systems, sense of responsibility, and professional ethics in order to do 3 things.
1. Better sell their ideas, concepts, and comps.
2. Efficiently participate in brainstorming sessions.
3. Prioritize comfortable work ethics.
Search, question, discuss, and analyze moral issues as they present themselves to you: appreciate and respect individual human ethics/values. Believe in your value system enough to confidently and comfortably affirm it in public but not so much that it becomes restrictive to your creativity and growth. Adapt them as you get new thoughts, influences, and responsibilities. Important: keep your values flexible, growing, and ever changing. Believe in them, publicly affirm them, and make a commitment to uphold them, but do not let them restrict or overwhelm your thinking: use your ethics, don't let them use you. To grow as a creative problem solving designer, continue to be open-minded, ask questions, and explore alternatives. Determine your values and let them go. Use them, don’t be used by them.

Ethics information
• Ethics: a personal moral judgment
• Morals: behavioral principles of right and wrong
Moral judgment is a thought that one will accept responsibility for or or make a commitment to. Its the end result of an investigation into a certain concept of thinking based on influences from the community, parents, church, friends, media, and teachers/mentors. Our fears encourage us to make judgments and form insecurities. We criticize, analyze, and judge others often as a way to make ourselves look better by comparison (or at least not so bad). Minimizing your fears can improve your self-esteem and security.
Ethics change to fit the situation. Murder is inherently neither right nor wrong. We have deemed it wrong. Jerry Falwell once said: “all law is the imposition of someone’s morality to the exclusion of someone else’s morality.”
One’s values should be flexible, growing, ever changing, based on new input, new thoughts, new influences, and new responsibilities. Society changes too fast to rely on yesterday’s judgments. One must be willing to change ethics as the need or situation arises. This requires that we be alert, aware, and have an open mind. “I have my morals. But they can certainly change.”

Ways to deal with different values
1. Isolation: leave each other alone

2. Coexist: live with both

3. One gives in

4. Both give in: compromise

5. Neither gives in: new ethic

Four things each human wants
1. To live, survive, and exist - to be
2. To feel important, respected, useful, and admired
3. To be loved, appreciated, and cared for
4. To have fun, participate in a variety of activities, and experience excitement

Two basic values
1. Harm no one.
2. Harm no one’s property.
These two values form the foundation for most people's personal set of ethics, morals, and values.What would you do?
Answer each of the following situations honestly. Do not dwell on the options, simply pick the one closest to how you truly feel. There is no right or wrong.

Tab Error
You and another person eat at a very nice restaurant. The check total is about $50 but a $3 item is left off the check. Do you:
___ Point out the error to the server?
___ Ignore it and pay the bill as is?

At a small mom-&-pop restaurant, the total is $15. Do you:
___ Point out the error to the server?
___ Ignore it and pay the bill as is?

Promotion
You work at a large advertising agency. You know that another designer has been taking long breaks and leaving early. Do you:
___ Tell your supervisors about his work habits?
___ Ignore it?
___ Let the person know you’re aware of his infractions?

That same other person is up for promotion. His work is okay but you feel you deserve the promotion. Do you:
___ Tell your supervisors about his work habits?
___ Ignore it?
___ Let the person know you’re aware of his infractions?

The Accident
You hit a parked car in a nearly deserted lot. The repair cost appears to be about $300. You are certain you have not been observed. Do you:
___ Leave a note of apology with your address and phone?
___ Leave a noteof apology but no address or phone?
___ Drive away?

You are certain you have been observed from a distance. Do you:
___ Leave a noteof apology with your address and phone?
___ Leave a noteof apology but no address or phone?
___ Drive away?

All-nighter Blues
You have designed the layout and type for a poster but still need a good illustration. You find the perfect image in a recent issue of Communication Arts magazine. It is now 11pm, the comp is due at 9:00 tomorrow morning. Do you:
___ Trace the image and alter it slightly in color and style?
___ Make a color copy enlargement of the image and paste it onto your comp?
___ Stay up 4 more hours to create an image based on but not a copy of the piece?

You find an image in an obscure old newspaper. Do you:
___ Trace the image and alter it slightly in color and style?
___ Make a color copy enlargement of the image and paste it onto your comp?
___ Stay up 4 more hours to create an image based on but not a copy of the piece?

Nuclear War!
You work for the government and you are in charge of experimental science stations in the remote western United States. Suddenly World War III breaks out and bombs begin dropping. People are heading for whatever shelters are available.
You receive a call from a remote station asking for help. Near that station are 11 people but only enough food, air, and water for 6 people for the 3 months they will need to stay there to escape radiation fallout. These people realize if they try to select the 6 people themselves, they will become irrational and fighting will break out. They have called upon you, as their superior, to make the decision. They will abide by and enforce whatever you decide.
You are on your way to your own shelter and only have time to get the superficial descriptions of the 11 people as listed below. You must make the decision within twenty minutes. Remember, the 6 people you select may be the only survivors in that area.
In the time given, select 6 people of the 11 to be let into the shelter.